COLOURHAZE
The Search
One day in 2016 I received an unexpected phone call from the past:
It was Stefan, whom I hadn´t heard of from for 20 something years.
He told me, he had a band called Colour Haze and had recorded the tracks for a new Album; he was looking for a keyboard-player to make the sounds he had in mind for the new tracks become real, and he remembered me (we had been making music together in the early 90s but had gone different routes ever since).
He explained to me what he had in mind and sent over some material; I considered a possible role I could take up in his music.
When I had developed some ideas, we scheduled some dates at his recording studio. So I packed up some instruments which I thought would be interesting enough to contribute to the sound of the band and drove out in the countryside, where he lives.
In his Studio he revealed that everything would be recorded on tape, so no digital editing would be possible… Coming from a modern digital production environment myself, this presented a real challenge, because recording that way comes down to the one perfekt take. He presented me with the Keyboards he already had in his studio; a Fender Rhodes Stage Piano 73 and a Hammond M3 Organ. Owning a Rhodes myself I was familiar with that but the Hammond Organ…
I had played a real, well oiled and cared for Hammond B3 and A-100 when I was like 15 for a few hours, and ever since then had a hankering for „THAT“ Sound.
I never bothered to get the real thing - too heavy, to clunky, too muchlocked in on only that „ONE“ Sound. So I fulfilled my Hammond needs with burning through several digital clones in search of „THAT“ one sound; finally staying on the emulation in my trusted nord electro 4d, which comes really close to the original and is a lot of fun to play. But Stefans REAL M3 from 1959 was something different. It had an organic quality, it was noisy, the tubes emitted hot air, it physically vibrated - it was alive! It was a REAL Instrument with which I connected to immediately. Suddenly, everything about the digital emulations felt wrong and like a pile of plastic. Needless to say, the recording sessions were sooo much fun; I had such a good time with especially this instrument. We clicked musically, something fell in place, something felt right. One day, after the „In Her Garden“ Album had been released, Stefan asked me if I´d like to join the Band for an upcoming tour.
Having never seen Colour Haze Live, and knowing only Stefan, I decided to go see them live before making a final decision. Boy was I blown away! The mindblowing center of attention for me was Marni and his drumming skills. Coming from a Compositional and Jazz-playing background I´ve had my share of playing with great musicians and especially drummers - but THIS kind of energy-playing was something else. It reminded me of the 70s high energy Bill Bruford or Phil Collins with Brand X. After two songs I knew I had to play with this drummer, whatever it takes. Having optimised my rigg for maximum lightness and portability over the years, I talked with Stefan about my ideas for the instruments I would take on the road. To say he was underwhelmed, is an understatement…
He wanted the big seventies keyboard castle! I told him, I´ve had my fair share of back pains because of moving around heavy clunky keyboards and he just replied: But we have a roady… Okaaaaay…? That´s definitly a new perspective…
So I went on the classifieds and bought a chopped 1962 Hammond M3 (for portability) and dusted off my trusted modified Fender Rhodes piano. On rehearsals I found I still needed more colours, so I pondered the question, which synth would have the power to stand up against Stefans 2 stacks… Only one could do that: My Multimoog from 1976… I´ve had it modified to have more beef in the bass range and so we tested it against Stefans apocalyptic rigg: It stood up very well and could keep up with him. Additionally I packed up my trusted nord electro 4d and filled it up with Mellotron and other Sounds specifically designed for Colour Haze Songs by me in my Studio. To put the icing on the cake, I packed an old Korg Guitar MultiFX board for my Rhodes (for Drive, Delay, PitchShift, PhaserFX) and, since I didn´t want the HammondSound to be too pure and „old school“, I ran it through my Korg electribe sampler for StrangeDelays, Reverbs, Tape Stops and Granular Repeater FX, before sending it to a Leslie Speaker Simulation. I voted for a digital Leslie Simulation although I own a real one, because on loud stages (especially close to a 100dB Guitar-Rig) it´s necessary to mic a Leslie really close to omit bleed from other Instruments; this results in a pulsing tremolo sound from the Organ, which I hate…so digital it is. For the Multimoog, I needed delays and EQ, which I realized with Modular Synthesizer Modules in a tiny Rack. For the 2018 Tour and the remaining shows of 2018, this was a good working setup.
Playing more and more shows, the Moog got more and more use and I got more and more stressed out with having to remember all the Settings for the increasing number of Sounds through the Set. The old Multimoog didn´t have the ability to save programmed sounds, so one has to remember the position of every knob and dial for each sound change - which of course makes quick sound changes impossible. And, the travelling didn´t do it favors either: It got a bit unreliable; tuning problems, oscillator 2 sometimes had a strange additonal unwanted sizzle and general degrading of the buttons, keyboard and potis.
So I decided to replace it with a more modern version of itself: The Moog Subsequent 37 And now to the interesting anecdote regarding this new synth: When I first tested the new Moog in our rehearsal space alone, I thought, wow, this sounds powerful, immediate, „in-your-face“ - that´s a good relacement, no one will notice the difference, good decision.
When Stefan and Philipp came in and heard me noodling around on it; their first commentary was like: Oh, this sounds thinner, less powerful, a bit more sterile. I dismissed their commentaries instantly as nonsense... Then we started rehearsing and almost immedialty I didn´t hear the Moog anymore; the guitar pushed it away, I couldn´t hear it in the mix anymore. I had to compress it and raise it´s subjective level to be able to fight against this wall of guitarnoise. The old Multimoog didn´t have this problem. I guess, it has to do with the differences in circuit design (old 70s vs. new SMD-Design) which you wouldn´t hear in a „normal“ use case; but with Colour Haze and this massive wall of sound, tiny differences somehow matter. And that was a valuable lesson: The sounds for Colour Haze need to be well adjusted even on a microscopic level.
That´s something, I hadn´t encountered in my life as a musician up until this point. In other musical styles, it´s totally ok with an approximation of sounds of about 80% - the music will work and you´ll get the idea of the track.
But in Colour Haze, the whole concept of the band only works on a 98% sound-level. This is why Marni tunes his Drums to every venue we play in, Stefan painstackingly crafts his guitar sound every soundcheck to fit in the room, Philipp burns through different amps to find „the one“ Sound and I´m refining my sonic world on a microscopic level to aim for maximum „functionability“ in the songs. And with this knowledge, I set off to improve on my FX, which were a bit questionable at this time.
I upgraded the Rhodes FX to a modern, high oversampling Line 6 Helix and replaced the Moog FX with a Boss Guitar Multi FX Board with a huge amount of knobs to have immediate access. Another important anecdote: The first gig I played with the new Moog was in Sardignia on Duna Jam. The two instruments were not in tune to each other! The Moog was one halftone too deep - meaning: If I played a D on the organ, a D-flat came from the Moog. I dived into the digital realm of the analog Moog in search of some parameters, to handle the overall tuning… Everything seemed to be ok…wtf was going on?
Did the long bumpy drive to the island somehow fucked up the new Instrument? After some continued searching, I accidently hit some keys on the rhodes and suddenly realized: The Moog and the Rhodes are perfectly in tune to each other! The problem was the organ! It somehow played a halftone higher! Something odd like this had never happened to me before.
Okay, I called my organ-guy in Germany and asked him, if it could be possible that the organ could have be damaged from the long ride. Here is what he told me: The old Hammond organs are super reliable, they are built like washing machines from the 60s; when properly oiled they work for 100 years - but: It´s tonewheel-motor synchronizes to the frequency of the powerline! The only explanation for this behaviour is, that the frequency of the power isn´t 50Hz but a bit more.
Having learned that, I informed our wonderfully skilled road-tech Martin Zimmermann: He boldly sprang into action and quickly whipped out a measuring device from his belt, measured the frequency in the power connections and yes, it was 52,5 Hz… As the Implications of this dawned on me I started to sweat: If we are playing a track in C, I´d have to think in C on every Instrument, but on the Organ, I´d have to instantly transpose everything to B… That would fuck up my brain. Luckily, while I was going through our setlist with growing Horror, Martin went off to save the day: He tracked the powerlines to a construction site generator, checked the control panel and started „tuning“ my organ with a frequency knob on the generator! I compared the organ to my Rhodes (which is fixed to a standard a=440Hz) and when they were identical we went with that setting. Since that day, I always carry a device that enables me to generate my own frequency in a powerline when we are giging with the Hammond.
After a while playing with the new Moog, I felt, I was still missing some beef. When we recorded the „We are“ Album, I didn´t use any Moog on the tracks. Instead I used a very lively, strange and powerful synthesizer from 1978, a Yamaha CS-30.
This instrument is a wonderfully quirky, very unique sounding studio machine, which harmonizes perfectly with Stefans wall of guitar. But I was missing something in the Moog sound and thought the culprit to be in the a bit underwhelming Digital FX Board, I was using to run it through.
So I started building a whole new analogue FX Section for the Synth; that´s what you can see sitting on the organ since 2021. It comprises of an Akai Mfc42 analogue Filterbank (Mono to Stereo Filter, Phaser, EQ), an Empress Bass Compressor and a Digital Delay/Looper Combination (tc Flashback II).
I also exchanged the Korg Electribe (Organ FX) for a Korg Kaoss Pad 3 and a really really good drive (JPTR FX Jive) and to give the Hammond that „extra-smack“ a fantastic analogue EQ (Fairfiled Circuitry Long Life).
This brought my general sound to a more direkt and pure level, without the fogginess and ambiguity of most digital devices. I also replaced my digital Leslie pedal with a rare anlogue one (Hughes&Kettner Rotosphere II), which I found to be much benefiting for the organ and very close to the real thing, since it could suddenly cope with the loud Guitar.
I found my perfect setup.
Time went on and after a while, I ran into more and more annoying obstacles with the general sound-architecture of the Moog. It´s a solid sounding, reliable little synth, which does what it can do very well, but it´s certainly limited in it´s possibilities.
Coming from a mostly Modular Sound Design Environment in my Studio which follows the „Everything-anytime-with-no-limits“ maxim, I began envisioning sounds for Colour Haze, which the Moog simply could not do.
I began looking around for alternatives and stumbled over a behemoth from the French company Arturia - the Matrixbrute. It seemed to be able to even outperform the stuff, I did on my Studio-Miracle CS-30…
So, I went and bought this analogue monster, reprogrammed all the moog sounds in it and changed the synths on the next Tour.
The Matrixbrute proved to be really valuable, and Stefan said, he liked the unique voice and power of the sound - he had the feeling, this synth had a voice of it´s own.
And it could easilly keep up with Stefans guitar power.
And finally, after 5 years of touring, my trusted Hammond M3 started acting up more and more (and my backpains were gradually increasing with this 90kg solid furniture piece from the 50s).
Since the Organ didn´t play such a vital role in our sets anymore, I decided that it was time for the old lady to get some rest…I finally replaced it with a very high end (lightweight!) digital Clone from Italy (Crumar Mojo Classic) - and we arrived at the present Keyboard Setup.
I guess, the next thing getting retired in the foreseeable future is my 1976 Fender Rhodes…
Spare parts are really expensive, and the touring made it necessary to repair and enforcen it´s case and lately the tines are starting to break…
But as of writing, I´m not quite sure with what to replace it - I did some modifications on it´s sound Harp to give it the same „bark“ and tone as George Duke used to have on his Rhodes. And most of the sampled ones are too well tuned and clean - they sound pretty sterile to me and don´t have that special quality, I prefer in a Rhodes.
The search continues…
